during the period which we are considering. [Sidenote: _Theorists:
Daniello._] The first author of one is generally taken to be Daniello,
whose _Poetica_ appeared in 1536; and I have not discovered any earlier
claimant. I do not quite understand how Mr Spingarn has arrived at the
conclusion that “in Daniello’s theory of tragedy there is no single
Aristotelian element,” especially as he himself elsewhere acknowledges
the close—almost verbal—adherence of this early writer to the Stagirite.
But it is probably true that Daniello was thinking more of the Platonic
objections and of following out the Boccaccian defence, than of merely
treading in the footprints of Aristotle. He is the first, since
Boccaccio himself, to undertake that generous, if rather wide and vague
as well as superfluous, “defence of poesy” which many Italians repeated
after him, and which was repeated after them by our Elizabethans,
notably by Sir Philip Sidney.
As his little book is somewhat rare, and as it has such good claims to
be among the very earliest vernacular disputations of a general
character on poetry in Italy, if not also in Europe, it may be well to
give some account of it. My copy has no title-page, but dates itself by
a colophon on the _recto_ of the errata-leaf at the end, with a
veto-privilege, by concession of the Pope, the seignory of Venice, and
_all_ the other princes and lords of Italy, advertised by Giovan Antonio
di Nicolini da Sabio, Venice, 1536. It fills 136 small pages of italic
type, and is in dialogue form, rather rhetorically but not inelegantly
written, and dedicated by Bernardo Daniello of Lucca to Andrea Cornelio,
Bishop-Elect of Brescia. Daniello does refer to Aristotle, and borrows
(not perhaps quite intelligently) from him; but his chief sources are
the Latins, and he sets or resets, with no small interest for us, that
note of apology for the Poets against Plato which was to dominate
Italian criticism, and after exercising some, but less, effect on
French, to be strenuously echoed in England. There are some rather
striking things in Daniello. He is sound enough on the mission of the
poet as being to delight (though he is to teach too) and also to
persuade—the ancient union of Poetics and limited Rhetoric evidently
working in him. On the relations of poetry and philosophy he might be
echoing Maximus Tyrius and Boccaccio, and very likely is thinking of the
latter. But he strikes a certain cold into us by remarking that Dante
(whom he nevertheless admires very much) was perhaps greater and more
perfect as a philosopher than as a poet; and it does not seem likely
that he was aware of the far-reaching import of his own words when he
lays it down (p. 26) that Invention, Disposition, and Elocution being
the three important things, the poet is not, as some think, limited to
any special matter. If he had meant this, of course he would have come
to one of those _arcana_ of criticism which are even yet revealed, as
matter of serene conviction, to very few critics. But he pretty
certainly did not fully understand his own assertion; and indeed slurs
it off immediately afterwards. After taking some examples from Dante and
more from Petrarch, Daniello adopts (again prophetically) the doctrine
that the Poet must practically know all arts and sciences, in order that
he may properly deal with his universal subject. He is specially to
study what is called in Latin _Decorum_ and in Italian _Convenevolezza_.
Tragedy and Comedy are to be rigidly distinguished. And so this curious
First Blast of the Trumpet of sixteenth-century vernacular criticism is
emphatic against the confusion which was to bring about the mightiest
glories of sixteenth-century literature. A large part of the small
treatise is taken up with examples, in the old rhetorical manner of
qualities, “colours,” figures, &c. The whole of the latter part of the
First Book consists of these, as does almost the whole of the Second,
with an extension into verbal criticism of the passages cited as
illustrating kinds, technical terms, and the like. Indeed the general
considerations are chiefly to be found in the first forty or fifty
pages; and it is really remarkable how much there is in this short space
which practically anticipates in summary the ideas of most of the much
more voluminous writers who follow.[63]
-----
Footnote 63:
M. Breitinger (_Les Unités d’Aristote avant Corneille_, p. 7) says,
“ce livre n’est qu’un commentaire du _Canzoniere_ de Pétrarque.” He
can hardly have read it; and most probably confused it with the
_Spositione_ by Daniello which accompanies an edition of Petrarch
(Venice, 1549), and had been partially published eight years earlier.
This is a full but rather wooden commentary, chiefly interesting to
contrast with Castelvetro’s, and as showing the Italian tendency to
expatiate rather than to appreciate.
-----
Fracastoro, physician, logician, and not ungraceful poet of the
graceless subject of _Syphilis_, deals with both Plato and Aristotle in
his dialogue _Naugerius_, and discourses deeply on the doctrine of
Imitation, the Theory of Beauty, the Aristotelian conception of the poet
as more universal and philosophical than the historian, and the Platonic
objection to the intervals between poetry and truth. [Sidenote:
_Fracastoro._] This dialogue,[64] however (the full title is _Naugerius
sive de Poetica_, its chief interlocutor being Andrea Navagero, the best
follower of Catullus in Renaissance Latin[65]), tells a certain tale by
its coupling with another, _Turrius sive de Intellectione_. It is wholly
philosophical in intent and drift: it is perhaps the very
“farthest”—comparatively early (1555) as is its date—of those Italian
excursions, in the direction of making Criticism an almost wholly
abstract and _a priori_ subject, which balance the unblushing “Convey—do
nothing but convey,” of Vida and his followers. One of its very earliest
axioms (p. 324 _ed. cit. infra_) is that “qui recte dicere de hac re
velit, prius sciat necesse est, quænam poetæ natura est, quidque ipsa
poetica, tum et quis philosophi genius,” &c. It must be admitted that
Fracastoro is among the very ablest and most thoroughgoing explorers of
these altitudes. No one has more clearly grasped, or put more forcibly,
than he has that compromise between Plato and Aristotle which has been
and will be mentioned so often as characteristic of the Italian thinkers
in this kind. Indeed, the fifty pages of his Dialogue are almost a
_locus classicus_ for the first drawing up of the creed which converted
Sidney, and to which Milton, indocile to creeds as he was, gave scarcely
grudging allegiance. It is full, too, of interest in deliverances on
minor points—the difference between the orator and the rhetor (p. 343),
the shaping of a particular kind of “orator” into a poet, his
universality and his usefulness, the limits of his permitted fiction and
the character of his charm. But Fracastoro is wholly in these generals:
it is much if he permits himself a rare illustration from an actual
poet.
-----
Footnote 64:
_Fracastorii Opera_, 2 vols., Lyons, 1591. The _Naugerius_ is at i.
319-365.
Footnote 65:
A few of these poems of Navagero will be found in Pope’s _Selecta
Poemata Italorum_ (Londoni, 1740); more in the Oxford Selection
(1808); most in _Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum_ (Florence,
1552).
-----
And always in these writers we find the old deviations, the old red
herrings drawn across the scent. Fracastoro himself, reasonable as he is
in many ways, falls into the foolish old fallacy that a good poet must
be a good man, and the less obviously ridiculous but still mischievous
demand from him of the all-accomplished acquirements once asked of the
rhetorician.
Putting aside, for the moment, such rather later and much more important
works as the _Discorsi_ of Giraldi Cinthio, the _De Poetis Nostrorum
Temporum_ of his half-namesake Lilius Giraldus, and the two capital
treatises of Minturno, one of which appeared after Trissino’s book, we
may give a few words to two Italian tractates, the _Versi e Regole della
Nuova Poesia Toscana_of Claudio Tolomei (1539) and Muzio’s or Mutio’s
Italian verse _Arte Poetica_, which was published with some other work
in 1551.[66] [Sidenote: _Formalists: Mutio. Tolomei and classical
metres._] The last is noteworthy as an early example of the vernacular
critical poem—a kind suggested by Horace, and illustrated later by
Boileau and Pope, but certainly more honoured by its practitioners than
in itself. Yet it would not be just to deny Mutio a high if rather vague
conception of poetry, and, in particular, a most salutary conviction
that the poet must _dis_realise his subjects. Tolomei’s book, on the
other hand, challenges attention as probably the beginning of that
pestilent heresy of “classical metres” which, arising in Italy, and
tainting France but slightly (as was natural considering the almost
unquantified character of the modern French language), fastened with
virulence upon England, affected some of our best wits, and was within
measurable distance of doing serious harm. The plague was so much at its
worst with us that the chapter on Elizabethan Criticism will be the
proper place for its discussion. But though Ascham himself thought it no
plague at all, it was certainly one of the very worst of these
“Italianations” to which he objected so violently; and Tolomei was its
first prophet in the country of its origin.
-----
Footnote 66:
_Rime Diverse_ (Venice, f. 68-94). The name on the title-page is
Mu_t_io, and the spelling Mu_z_io, which some books have, may lead to
confusions; for there appears to be another _Rime Diverse_ of Muzio
four years earlier, which does not contain the _Arte_. This is in
blank-verse, agreeably written, with some general observations on
Poets and Poetry, Ancient and Modern, and practical enough. Says
Mutio, _e.g._,—
La catena
Di Dante non e leggiadra, se non
Fa punto con la terza sua rima.
-----
Not a few names, some famous in European literature for other
performances of their bearers, some almost unknown except to the student
of this subject, fall into one or other of these classes, or, as very
commonly happens, qualify in a undecided manner for two, or for all.
[Sidenote: _Others: Tomitano, Lionardi, B. Tasso, Capriano._] As early
as 1545 Tomitano[67] had dwelt on the above-mentioned fallacy of the
necessary learning of poets: Lionardi,[68] nine years later, in a pair
of Dialogues expressly devoted to _Poetic Invention_, extended this in
the widest and wildest manner, so that the poet becomes a perfect
good-man-of-the-Stoics—an all-round and impeccable Grandison-Aristotle.
The same idea and others were emitted by Bernardo Tasso, good father of
a great son, who not only practised poetry to the vast extent of the
_Amadigi_, but discussed it in a formal _Ragionamento_ of the
subject.[69] Later, Capriano[70] gave the more elaborate exaltation of
poetry as a sort of Art of Arts, combining and subduing to its own
purpose all forms of Imitation, and following up Vida’s superfine
objections to Homer as trivial and undignified, and his rapturous
exaltation of the “decency” of Virgil. This book, very short, is also
rather important—more so than might be judged from some accounts of it.
It is neither paged, nor numbered in folio, but does not extend beyond
signature F ii. of a small quarto, with a brief appendix of Italian
verse. There are eight chapters—the first discussing what things are
imitable and what imitation is; the second vindicating for poetry the
portion of supreme imitative art; the third dividing it into “natural”
and “moral”; the fourth arguing that Epic or Heroic (not, as Aristotle
thinks, drama) is the highest kind of “moral” poetry; the fifth
containing, among other things, an interesting revolt against Greek; the
sixth discoursing on number and sound; the seventh exalting the good
poem above everything; and the eighth rapidly discussing the origin,
rank, necessity, parts, force, end, &c., of Poetry. Capriano does not
give himself much room, and fails, like most of these critics, in the
all-important connection of his theories with actual work; but he must
have been a man of no common independence and force of thought.[71]
-----
Footnote 67:
_Delia Lingua Toscana._ The four Books of this are rather empty
things. The first goes to show that Philosophy is necessary to the
perfect orator; the second that it is equally necessary to the perfect
poet; the third that Rhetoric is useful for writing and speaking with
eloquence; while the fourth discusses oratorical diction and its
ornaments. Few of the books cited here better justify De Quincey’s too
sweeping ban.
Footnote 68:
_Due Dialogi dell' Inventione Poetica di Alessandro Lionardi_ (Venice,
1554). No one carries the _ventosa loquacitas_ about the origin of
laws, and virtues, and opinions, and what not, farther than Lionardi;
no one is more set on defining “_the_ Historian,” “_the_ Orator,”
“_the_ Poet,” &c.; no one pays more attention to all the abstractions.
At p. 18 he has a curious catalogue, occupying the greater part of a
small quarto page, and capable of being extended to a large folio, or
many large folios, of “subjects” and “effects,” in regard to history,
enmity, discord, war, peace; in short, all the contents of the
dictionary. “Perdonatemi,,” says another interlocutor, “se interrompo
i vostri ragionamenti,” and indeed they might have gone on for ever.
But the new man has his catalogue ready, too.
Footnote 69:
Venice, 1562. It is very short and very general. There are some
literary touches in his _Lettere_ (2 vols., Venice, 1562), especially
a correspondence with Cinthio on the _Amadigi_.
Footnote 70:
_Della Vera Poetica_, Venice, 1555.
Footnote 71:
His volume appears to be almost _introuvable_ for sale; but the
British Museum has no less than three copies. I wish it would give me
one of them.
-----
More important than these to us, though less technically critical, and
therefore in some cases commending themselves less to students of the
subject from some points of view, are some poets and men of letters of
the earlier and middle parts of the century who have touched critical
subjects. [Sidenote: _Il Lasca._] I should myself regard the
Prologues[72] of Grazzini (“Il Lasca”)—in which he repeatedly and
unweariedly protests against the practice of moulding Italian comedy
upon Plautus and Terence, regardless of the utter change in manners, and
so forth—as worth shelves full of “in-the-air” treatises. For this
application of the _speculum vitæ_[73] notion, the idea of _The Muses’
Looking-glass_, which was obtained from Cicero through Donatus, was the
salvation of the time, keeping Comedy at least free from the fossilising
influences of the false Imitation. Although the unwary might reasonably
take the author of the famous caution not to read St Paul for fear of
spoiling style (there are at least half-a-dozen of the greatest pieces
of style in the world to be found in the two _Epistles to the
Corinthians_ alone) as either a silly practitioner of undergraduate
paradox or a serious dolt, yet the _Della Volgar Lingua_ of Bembo[74] is
by no possibility to be neglected in taking account of the critical
attitude of Italy at the time. [Sidenote: _Bembo._] It is of course too
purist and “precious”; it “sticks in the letter” to a perilous extent;
but there is real appreciation in it of what the writer can appreciate,
and among the things that he can appreciate are good and great things.
[Sidenote: _Caro._] Annibale Caro has (and deserves) a bad name, not
merely for the unfair manner in which he carried on his controversy with
Castelvetro (see next chapter), but for the tedious logomachy of the
controversy itself, which on his side, besides filling a regular
_Apologia_ and other pieces, overflows constantly into his letters.[75]
[Sidenote: _Varchi._] But this very controversy testifies to the zest
and the undoubted sincerity with which literary matters were dealt with
by the Italians, and it served further as a starting-point for the
elaborate _Ercolano_[76] of Varchi, who in divers lectures, &c., also
dealt with the more abstract questions of the nature of poetry, the
status of the poet, and the like. In short, the documents on the subject
have already reached the condition referred to by the warning given in
the introductory chapter to the first volume of this book, that while in
that volume we had to search for and discuss every scrap bearing on the
subject, here large classes of document would have to be treated by
summary and representation only.
-----
Footnote 72:
Especially in those to _La Strega_ and _l’Arzigoglio_ (_Commedie di A.
Grazzini_, ed. Fanfani, Florence, 1897), pp. 173 and 435. Gelli and
others do much the same.
Footnote 73:
The proper quotation is _imitatio vitæ, speculum consuetudinis, imago
veritatis_. It is given as early as by Robortello (see note opposite).
But with that intelligent operation of the _communis sensus_ which
pedants dislike, _speculum vitæ_ was what took the general.
Footnote 74:
In _Prose Scelte di P. Bembo_, ed. Costero (Milan, 1880), pp. 141-278.
Footnote 75:
Ed. Costero, 2 vols. (Milan, 1879 and 1884).
Footnote 76:
Ed. Costero (Milan, 1888).
-----
Moreover, great as are the volume and the intensity of Italian attention
to criticism in the years between 1535 and 1560, the Devil’s Advocate
may, without mere cavilling, cast disparagement upon most of its
expressions. The dealings of the scholars with the subject are no doubt
to a certain extent accidental or obligatory; they might have bestowed,
and in fact actually did bestow,[77] at least equal pains on texts not
directly, or not at all, concerning criticism. The work of Tolomei is
merely an example of those Puckish tricks which something sometimes
plays on the human intellect; that of Muzio a dilettante exercise
mainly. The treatises of the others from Daniello to Varchi hover
between abstract discussion, which sometimes approaches twaddle,
dilettante trifling which makes the same approach on another side, and
an estimable, but for literature at large comparatively unimportant,
guerilla about the virtues and qualities, the vices and defects, of the
Italian language—a language which had already seen its very best days,
and was settling down to days very far from its best. The three authors
to whom we shall now come, and who will occupy us to the end of this
chapter, escape, in one way or another, the brunt of all these
grudgements. Minturno supplies us with the most wide-ranging and
systematic handlings of poetry in its general, and of “regular” and
“vulgar” poetry in their particular, aspects that had yet been produced,
Giraldi Cinthio with some of the most original critical essays, Lilius
Giraldus with a survey of the poetical, and to some extent the literary,
state of Europe in his time, for the like of which we may look in vain
before and not too successfully since.
-----
Footnote 77:
Robortello edited Ælian and Æschylus as well as Longinus and
Aristotle; Petrus Victorius was busied very widely with the classics.
The combined treatment of Aristotle and Horace by the former in his
_Explicationes_ (Basle, 1555) is distinctly noteworthy. His dealings
with the Greek are almost pure commentary; those with the Roman,
though called a “Paraphrase,” are much freer. He begins with a sort of
expository lecture on the _Epistola ad Pisones_, introducing most of
its matter and much illustration from other authors. Then separate
short essays follow on Satire, Epigram, Comedy, _Sales_, and Elegy.
The heading “Sales” is especially worthy of attention as illustrating
that tormenting preoccupation of the classics on Wit, which
transmitted itself to the Renaissance, and is found in moderns as
recent as Whately. Robortello exercised much authority, and is shown
by M. Morel-Fatio in his recent edition of Lope de Vega’s _Arte Nuevo_
(_v. infra_, p. 343) to have furnished the Spanish poet with much, if
not most, of the miscellaneous erudition which he displays to no great
purpose. Robortello’s earlier _editio princeps_ of Longinus (ibid.,
1554) is noteworthy in a different way. He was by no means more modest
than the average Renaissance scholar; on the contrary, he is accused
of special arrogance. But this _opus redivivum, antea ignotum, e
tenebris in lucem editum_, as he calls it, seems to have puzzled, if
not actually abashed, him. He has no introduction, no regular
commentary: only side-headings of the matter, from which, he says,
“all the method of the book, and the order of the questions treated,
and the whole rationale of the teaching,” and much else, can be
learnt. The spirit was too potent for him who had called it up. Of
other mainly classical commentators, Riccoboni (_Compendium Artis
Poeticæ_, 1591) is again useful, because he combines Horace and
Aristotle, and practicalises the combination, identifying the
Aristotelian or pseudo-Aristotelian (see vol. i. p. 34) “Episode” with
the first Four Acts, the Exodus with the Fifth, &c. Maggi, Segni,
Zabarella are even farther from our sphere.
-----
Antonio Sebastiano, called Minturno (which is stated—I know not with
what correctness—in a MS. note in my copy of the _Arte Poetica_ to be
merely an “academic” surname), is a good example of that combination of
scholastic thoroughness and diligence with wider range of study which
honourably distinguishes the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
but which, save in rare instances, went out in the later years of the
last-named age, and has too seldom been recovered since. [Sidenote:
_Minturno._] In 1559 he produced a _De Poeta_ and in 1563 an _Arte
Poetica_, one of which, as the respective titles imply, is written in
Latin and the other in Italian, but which are by no means replicas of
each other with the language changed. Both were printed at Venice; and
though they came from different presses, they range very well together,
both being in a smallish quarto, but with very close type, so that the
560 odd pages of the _De Poeta_ and the 450 odd of the _Arte_ contain
between them a vast amount of matter. The plans of the two
treatises—which are allotted naturally according to their language, the
Latin to poetry in general and to classical verse, the Italian to its
own kind—are not strikingly but slightly different. The _De Poeta_,
which is addressed to Ettore Pignatelli, Duke of Bivona, takes the
time-honoured form of a symposium or dialogue, the persons being the
poet Sannazar (who is always introduced by his Latin names of Actius
Syncerus) and his friends, and the scene the famous Villa Mergellina.
Indeed, Minturno seems to have written the book at Naples, whence he
dates it a year before that of its appearance. In the later work he
himself is the principal speaker, his antagonists or interlocutors being
Vespasiano Gonzaga in the First book, Angelo Costanzo in the Second,
Bernardino Rota in the Third, and Ferrante Carafa in the Fourth. The
dialogue-form, it may also be mentioned, is less, and that of the formal
treatise more, prominent in the _Arte_.
Both volumes have the invaluable accompaniment of side-notes—an
accompaniment which not only makes the writer’s point more easily
intelligible to the reader, but prevents the writer himself from
straying. [Sidenote: _The_ De Poeta.] But the _De Poeta_ is not
furnished with either Contents or Index, while the _Arte_ is liberally
provided with both. This, in the first case, is to be regretted, not
merely because the book is much the longer of the two, but because the
indulgences of the dialogic form are more fully taken in it. After a
suitable beginning (with a _fons_ and a _platanus_ and other
properties), the subject is opened with a panegyric of poetry. The
origins of literature were in verse; all nations practised it. A more
sensible line is taken (it will be understood that the interlocutors of
course take different views, and one judges by the general drift) on the
subject of the all-accomplishment of the poets, than is the case with
some of the writers above mentioned; but Minturno points out (which is
no doubt true enough) that poetry in a manner “holds all the Arts in
fee,” can draw upon and dignify all. On the connection of verse with
poetry he holds a middle position, close to that of Aristotle himself,
and not very different from that long after taken up by Coleridge in the
_Biographia Literaria_. He will not pronounce verse essential to poetry,
but evidently thinks that poetry would be extremely foolish to dispense
with its practically inseparable companion. The consecrated procession
of poets from Amphion and Orpheus to Homer and even Virgil is set
a-going as usual. Then the discussion, after a little skirmishing,
settles down at p. 22 to the question of Imitation; and, amid much
scholastic subdivision of its kinds and manners, the delight produced by
this is very strongly insisted on. Next, the Platonic onslaught is
discussed, and urged or repelled by turns; the defence being clearly the
author’s side, and maintained with considerable vigour, and with
plentiful examples from Homer and Virgil both. The line taken, however,
leads Minturno to lay stress on the _instructive_ power of poetry. The
poet’s purpose will, he holds, govern his imitation, and direct it so as
to excite admiration in the reader or hearer. This is possibly the
source of the next-century endeavour to elevate Admiration to the level
of Pity and Terror themselves.[78] Hence Minturno is constrained to
share the idea of the necessarily virtuous character of the poet: and,
except that he never separates the _delectare_ from the _prodesse_
altogether, he hugs the dangerous shore of the _hérésie de
l’enseignement_ too closely in his endeavour to escape the Platonic
privateers. By degrees the discussion glides into the comparison of Epic
and Tragedy, and the question whether Poetry is a matter of Art or of
Inspiration—and decides that it is both. And the First Book ends with
the pronouncement that a good poet must be a good man, but that he may
sometimes deal with not-good things.
-----
Footnote 78:
Let, however, the reader beware of being misled by the occurrence of
the _word_ “Admiratio” in the side-notes of pp. 52, 53. It is used in
quite a different sense.
-----
The Second begins with one of the demonstrations (which to us seem
otiose, but which were very important, not merely to the ideas of the
age, but as bulwarks against the Puritan and Utilitarian objections of
all times) that the poets, especially Homer and Virgil, are masters,
whether necessarily or not, of all the liberal arts and of philosophy as
well. When we remember the Philistine anti-poetics of Locke much more
than a century after Minturno’s time—nay, the still existing, if
lurking, idea that “great poet” must be (as somebody asserts that it is
or was in Irish slang) synonym for “utter fool”[79]—we shall not bear
too hardly on our author. But this discussion, in its turn, is bid to
“come up higher.” What is to be the _Institutio Poetæ_? What is he to do
and learn that he may in turn (p. 102) “delight, teach,
_transport_.”[80]
-----
Footnote 79:
Perhaps, if this be true, the Irish got it from their French friends
of the seventeenth century, among whom, according to the _Ménagiana_,
_poeta regius_ was the correct title of the King’s Fool.
Footnote 80:
Ut doceat, ut delectet, ut moveat. Suggested by Cicero on the orator.
-----
In all cases the admiration of the reader or hearer (p. 104) must
follow. But it will be obtained not quite in the same way as by the
orator, and with a difference in the different kinds of poetry. The
parts of a poem, too, are dealt with in a more or less Aristotelian
manner, but with large additions and substitutions, in view of the
greater range of literature that Minturno has before him, and of the
desire specially to bring in Virgil, of whom our critic, though not
quite such a fanatical partisan as Vida and Scaliger, is a hearty
admirer (see for instance p. 135). All the “parts” have more or less
attention in this book, both with reference to the different “kinds,”
especially epic and “heroic,” and also with regard to those general
principles of poetry which Minturno never forgets. The Third Book of
nearly 100 pages is directly devoted to tragedy; and Minturno pursues in
reference to this the same plan of following, but with a certain
independence and a great deal of expatiation, in Aristotelian footsteps.
He still lays great stress on Admiration; and it is really curious that
in thus forestalling, no doubt, Corneille’s teaching, he has by
anticipation hit at Racine and the _doucereux_ in a phrase[81] which has
been fairly guessed to have supplied Milton with a famous one[82] of his
own. He does not pay so much attention to the _crux_ of the _katharsis_
(on which most of these critics necessarily dwell more or less) in this
treatise as in the _Arte_ (_v. infra_).
-----
Footnote 81:
P. 173. _Amatorio mollique sermone effeminat._ See Spingarn, p. 70. It
should, however, be observed that Minturno is here avowedly expressing
the censure of Aristophanes on Euripides rather than his own opinion.
Footnote 82:
“Vain and amatorious.”
-----
The Fourth Book, even longer than the Third, is, like it, entirely
devoted to one subject; and the change of modern as compared with
ancient view is shown strongly by the fact that this subject is Comedy.
The admirers of Plautus and Terence, the countrymen of Ariosto and
Machiavelli, could not, indeed, be expected to turn from Comedy with the
disdainful shoulder of Aristotle; but such elaborate treatment as this
shows the hold which the subject had obtained. Yet it is ominous that
Minturno devotes especial attention to the subject of types; though, in
accordance with his usual practice, he gives much space to a general
treatment of the Ludicrous and its sources. There is also a good deal of
curious detail in this Book as to costume and theatrical arrangements
generally. The Fifth turns to Lyric, and sets forth its different kinds,
including Satire among them. And the Sixth deals with Diction and
Prosody, the section allotted to the latter being comparatively short
and interspersed between two on Style, proceeding of course a good deal
by Figures, though not in the most cut-and-dried manner, and illustrated
(as indeed are all the later Books) by abundant and unceasing quotation.
It may be observed that, as perhaps might be expected, the
dialogue-character disappears in them more and more, and the book takes
the form of a simple exposition by one or other of the personages. This
change prepares us for the arrangement of the _Arte_.
This book, as dates given and to be given show, was published
subsequently to the appearance of Scaliger’s _Poetic_, and may have been
to some extent influenced by it; but I do not think that Minturno, who
mentions Trissino and Bembo and Tolomei, ever refers to it, and he does
not give one the idea of a man who would conceal debts. [Sidenote: _The_
Arte Poetica.] In fact, his work upon the same subject had been
completed earlier. In this he has necessarily to go over some of the
same ground; but, as noted above, he repeats very little. He starts with
a general definition of poetry as an imitation of various manners and
persons in various modes, either with words or with harmonies or with
“times” separately, or with all these things together, or with part of
them. Other ternaries follow, as matter, instrument, and mode; manners,
affections, and deeds; suprahuman, human, and infrahuman; personages;
words, music, and “times”; epic, scenic, and melic; prose, verse, and
mixed narrative. These distinctions are put forth in an orderly manner,
but succinctly and without the discussion which is a feature of the
general parts of the _De Poeta_, Minturno evidently thinking that he has
sufficiently cleared the ground in that work. After some further
exposition of forms, &c., the handling is more specially directed to
Epic (_i.e._, narrative generally), and its parts and conditions are
expounded, still with a certain swiftness, but at greater length than
before. And once more the treatment concentrates itself—this time upon
Romance. The origin of the name and thing is lightly touched, and then
the great question is broached,[83] “Is Romance poetry?” Minturno will
not refuse it the name; but he cannot admit that it is the same kind of
poetry as that of which Aristotle and Horace have spoken. The
contrarieties of Romance and Heroic poetry are then carefully examined;
and while much praise is given to Ariosto, some fault is found with him,
and the mantle of the _Odyssey_ is especially refused him. In fact,
Minturno holds generally that the Romance is a defective _form_ of
poetry, ennobled by the excellence of some of its writers—a sort of
middle position which is very noteworthy. But he hardens his heart
against the irresistible historical and inductive argument which the
defenders of the Romance had already discovered, and will have it that
the laws of poetry are antecedent to poetic production (p. 32). And for
his main style of narrative poetry he returns to Epic or “Heroic”
proper, and discusses it on the old lines of Plot, Character, Manners,
Passions or Affections, &c., always with modern examples from the great
Italian poets. He also makes the very important, but very disastrous,
suggestion that the Christian religion provides all the necessary
“machinery” of Heroic,—a suggestion which was elaborately followed out
by Tasso and by Milton and by many a lesser man, and which Dryden had
thought of following, though he luckily did not.[84]
-----
Footnote 83:
Minturno mentions neither Cinthio (_v. infra_) nor Pigna—probably to
avoid the appearance of direct attack; but he must have been thinking
of one or the other or both. Something the same line was taken by
Sperone Speroni.
Footnote 84:
See next Book, p. 369.
-----
The Second Book takes up Drama in the same manner, but—as was always
made legitimate by the parasitic character of at least Italian
Tragedy—with much more reference to ancient and less to modern writers.
The Third Book deals with Lyric, the same inclusion of Satire which we
have noticed in the _De Poeta_ being made; and the Fourth with Poetic
Diction, Prosody, &c., still on the lines of the earlier treatise, but
with entire adaptation to the Italian subject. The latter books, as is
natural, are much more meticulous in their arrangement, descending, with
complete propriety, to the minutest details of rhyme and metre, as well
as, where necessary, of grammar. But Minturno never loses an opportunity
of ascending to the higher and more general considerations—the nature of
harmony, the origin and quality of rhyme, &c., the characters of kinds,
and even, to some extent, of authors. It is characteristic of him to
give an elaborate discussion of the Italian alphabet letter by letter
from the poetical point of view, and to strike off from this to a
consideration of the relations of Italian, Latin, and foreign modern
languages, the general methods of elevating style, and the question
whether there ought to be completely separate diction for poetry and
prose.
It is the presence of this contrast, or combination, in him which, as
much as anything else, has determined more attention in this place to
Minturno than to some other authors before noticed. [Sidenote: _Their
value._] In combination of thoroughness and range he seems to me to hold
a position both high and rather solitary. He has not quite the elaborate
system of Scaliger, but then he is much less one-eyed; he is less
original—has less _diable au corps_—than Castelvetro, but he is far less
eccentric and incalculable. His unfeigned belief in the noble and
general theories of poetry and the poet is set off by his sedulous
attention to particulars, as his attention to particulars is by his
escapes of relief into the region of generalisation, and by his
all-important addition of “transport” to “teach” and “delight.” He has
not reached—he has in fact declined—the historical antinomianism of
Patrizzi (_v._ next chap.); but that was inevitable, since this view was
in part a reaction from the movement which he represented, in part a
development of theories contemporary with himself. And his attitude in
regard to the _Romanzi_ is a significant sign of the turn of the tide.
Earlier, and in the neo-classics _quand même_ later, the fact that a
thing differs in kind from the accepted forms of poetry is proof that it
is not poetry at all. Minturno cannot go this length. It is poetry
inferior in kind, he still insists; but the excellence of those who have
adopted it saves it, no matter to what extent. The concession is fatal.
If Balbus builds a wall contrary to the laws of nature and architecture,
it will not be an inferior wall; it will tumble down, and not be a wall
at all. If he works a sum on the principle that two and two make five,
his answer will be hopelessly wrong. But if the wall stands, if the sum
comes right, the laws, the principles, cannot be wrong, though they may
be different from others. The infallible and exclusive Kind-rules of the
ancients are doomed to be swept away through the little gap in the dam
that Minturno has opened.
The _Discorsi_[85] of Giraldi Cinthio—famous author of _Novelle_, and
now much less famous, but perhaps not much less remarkable, producer of
the chief Italian horror-tragedy, the _Orbecche_—supply a very
interesting supplement-contrast to Minturno, whose earlier work they
preceded by but a few years, and whom they provided with a theory of
Romance to protest against. [Sidenote: _Giraldi Cinthio’s_ Discorsi.]
The exact date of the most interesting of them, and the question of
property or plagiarism in their contents, have been the subject of one
of those tedious “quarrels of authors” which are thickening upon us, but
which we shall avoid as far as possible. [Sidenote: _On Romance._]
Cinthio and a certain pupil of his, Giovanbattista Pigna, published in
the same year (1554) books on the “Romances”—_i.e._, poems like
Ariosto’s. Authorities decide in favour of the novelist, who asserts
that his book was written in 1549, while each asserted that he had
furnished the other with ideas; but it really does not matter. The point
is, that on one of the two, and very probably on both, there had dawned
the critical truth, which nobody had seen earlier, and on which Minturno
himself would have pulled down “the blanket of the dark” once more if he
could. Cinthio, it seems, first struck out the true line, and Pigna
later developed it in still greater detail. Aristotle did not know
Romance, and therefore his rules do not and cannot apply to it; while
Italian literature generally is so different in circumstances from Greek
that it must follow its own laws. Then Cinthio takes Ariosto and
Boiardo, as Aristotle himself had taken the poets that were before him,
and formulates laws from them. He does not ostracise the single-action
and single-hero poem, the Aristotelian epic. But he adds the
many-actioned and many-heroed poem like Ariosto’s, and the
chronicle-poem of successive actions by one party, of which there are
examples from Statius downward (and of which, we may add, the _Odyssey_
itself is really an example). For these two latter, which he rightly
regards as both Romantic, he and Pigna (who is more specially
_Ariostian_) gave rules accordingly, and Cinthio even illustrated his by
a poem on Hercules. Both, but especially Pigna, despite their
revolutionary tendencies in certain ways, cling to the ethical point of
view, and maintain, perhaps a little hardily, that the modern romantic
writers actually surpass the ancients in this respect.
-----
Footnote 85:
_Scritti Estetici di Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio_, 2 vols., Milan,
1864. (In Daelli’s _Biblioteca Rara_.) This edition gives extracts
from Pigna’s work, and documents respecting the quarrel.
-----
In their main contention Cinthio and Pigna were no doubt right, and much
in advance of their time. [Sidenote: _On Drama._] The reply of Minturno
that Poetry may adapt itself to the times, but cannot depart from its
own fundamental laws, is clearly a _petitio principii_. In his less
important _Discorso_ on the Drama Cinthio is hardly at all rebel to
Aristotle—indeed it is very important to observe that even in the
Romance Essay he has none of the partisan and somewhat illiberal
anti-Peripateticism which we find later in Bruno and others. There he
goes on the solid ground that Aristotle did not know the Kind for which
he does not account—that he was no more blamable than, as we may say,
supposing that he had given a definition of mammalia which excluded the
kangaroo. In the Drama Cinthio had not been brought face to face with
any similarly new facts. Italian tragedy, his own included, was
scrupulously Senecan, if not quite scrupulously Aristotelian, in general
lines. Italian comedy followed Plautus and Terence only too closely; and
though Cinthio’s lines of criticism (strengthened by the
Ciceronian-Donatist theory of the _speculum vitæ_) led him, like Il
Lasca and others, to insist on the different circumstances of Italian
literature here also, they necessitated no new lawmaking as in the case
of the _Romanzi_.
Both _Discorsi_ are full of ingenious _aperçus_, sometimes followed
out—sometimes not. [Sidenote: _Some points in both._] For instance, when
Cinthio (i. 24) cites his three examples of writers who have treated
their heroes from childhood upwards contrary to the Aristotelian
principles, he instances Xenophon in the _Cyropædia_ as well as Statius
and Silius Italicus. The instance does not in his expressed remarks, but
it might very well in his own or others’ thoughts, lead to the
consideration that whether verse is or is not essential to poetry, it is
certainly _not_ essential to Romance—with all the momentous and
far-reaching consequences of that discovery. Again he seems (i. 82) to
have appreciated, with a taste and sense rare in his age, the
impropriety of mixing up Christian and Pagan mythology. And the same
taste and sense appear, as a rule, in the minuter remarks (p. 100 _sq._)
on verse and phrase, and even on those minutest points not merely of
verbal but of literal criticism which the Italians, more sensible than
some modern critics, never despised, though they may sometimes have gone
to the other extreme. In fact, the last half, and rather more, of the
_Discorso_ is not so much concerned with the Romances as with poetic
diction and arrangement in general, or even with these matters as
concerns literature both in prose and in verse.
The dramatic _Discorso_, or rather _Discorsi_ (for we may throw in a
third piece on Satiric Composition), is much shorter than that on the
Romances, being necessarily less controversial, and therefore, as has
been said, less original. But Cinthio’s independence of mind does not
desert him even here. He is said to have been the first Italian who
dared, in the _Orbecche_ before mentioned, to disregard the Senecan
practice[86] (so tedious in all modern imitations of it, and so
crushingly exhibited in our own earliest tragic attempts) of beginning
with an entire scene, or even act, of monologue. But, as often happens,
his licences in some directions invite condonation by a tighter drawing
of the reins elsewhere. He is credited (or debited) with the first
reference in modern literature to the Unity of Time: and though it is
well always to accept these assertions of priority with a certain
suspension of judgment, it may be so. It is at any rate certain that he
does out-Aristotle Aristotle in regard to this Unity, upon which, as is
well known, the Stagirite lays very little stress. But he makes some
amends by relaxing the proscription of the happy ending, so long as the
proper purging effects of pity and terror are achieved. He also to some
extent relaxes the extremest stringency of the old rule about
trucidations _coram populo_. There _may_ be death on the stage: but
generally the _bienséances_ of domestic life should be preserved there.
On one point, in which Cinthio has had assigned to him the position of
anti-Aristotelian origin, I venture to differ as to the interpretation
of the _Poetics_ themselves, not merely from Mr Spingarn but from
Professor Butcher.[87] The later Neo-Classics, and especially the
French, may have made rank too absolute a qualification of the tragic
Hero. But I must say that I think they had their justification from
Aristotle himself, and that Cinthio is at worst but dotting the _i_'s of
the Stagirite as to σπουδαῖοι and χρηστοί. His extreme admiration of the
choruses of Seneca (in justification whereof he cites Erasmus) is not
wholly unwarranted. Few modern readers, unfortunately, know the stately
beauty of these artful odes: though of course his preference (p. 81) of
them to “all the Greeks” is wrong, and was probably occasioned by the
very small attention which most Renaissance writers paid to Æschylus.
The elaborate distinctions which he, like others, seeks to draw between
Tragedy and Comedy from artificial points of view are to some extent
justified by the very absence of such distinctions in Aristotle. They
thought it their duty to supply what they did not find.
-----
Footnote 86:
To speak correctly, Seneca prefers (_Agamemnon_, _Hercules Furens_,
_H. Œtæus_, _Medea_, _Troades_) to compose the First _Act_ of a
soliloquy and a chorus. This, when the chorus is not present, becomes
of course a monologue. In the _Hippolytus_, _Octavia_, _Thebais_, and
_Thyestes_, there _is_ dialogue in the first Act. But, even of these,
the first two begin with a lyrical monologue, which is in effect a
first _Scene_.
Footnote 87:
_Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_, p. 232.
-----
The Discourse, or rather Letter (for it bears both titles, and in scale
and character rather deserves the latter name) on Satire is confessedly
supplementary to the other _Discorsi_, and may be at least connected
with the fact that the indefatigable author had himself attempted a
satiric piece, _Egle_. [Sidenote: _On Satire._] He lays stress on the
special connection of the Satire with the cult of Bacchus, takes into
consideration the poetical as well as the scenic form, mentions the
mixed or Varronian variety, and even extends his view to the Bucolic or
Pastoral proper. But there are only some five-and-twenty pages, and the
thing seems to have been really composed at “request of friends.”
From a critic who did so much it would be somewhat unreasonable to
demand more. In fact, though Cinthio did not go so far along the high
historic path of truth as did Patrizzi thirty years later, he set on
that path a firm foot. For the moment, and in Italy, the _romanzi_ were
the true battle-ground; just as in England, for instance, that
battle-ground was to be found a little later in the drama. At a period
so early as this, and so close to the actual revolution of the
Renaissance, it could hardly be expected that any one should reach the
vantage-ground of a comprehensive survey of _all_ literature, so as to
deduce from it the positive and enfranchising, and not even from it the
negative and disfranchising, laws of poetry. Not only had the
vernaculars, with the exception of Italian itself, hardly furnished, at
the time when Cinthio wrote, any modern literature fit to rank with the
ancient—not only was it far too late, or far too early, to expect any
one to give mediæval literature a fair chance with both—but men were
still actually disputing whether the vernaculars had a right to exist.
They were, like his namesake and clansman, to whom we come next, hinting
surprise that any man of genius and culture should employ these
vernaculars when he might write Latin, or, like one of his antagonists,
Celio Calcagnini, aspiring to the disuse of vernacular for literary
purposes altogether. In an atmosphere still so far from clear, with such
heats and mists about, it is no small credit to Cinthio that, whether
moved by mere parochial patriotism or by the secret feeling that _sua
res_ as a novelist was at question, or by anything else, he heard and
caught at the dominant of the tune of criticism proper.
Pigna’s _I Romanzi_,[88] whatever we may think of the quarrel between
him and Cinthio, is a book not to be mentioned without considerable
respect, or dismissed with mention so merely incidental as that given to
it above. [Sidenote: _Pigna._] It is mainly, but not solely, a defence
of Ariosto, and has not a few merits,—a just conception of the
essentially Romantic nature of the _Odyssey_, a very careful and in the
main sensible discussion of Prosody, and a widish comparison of
instances. The main defect of it is the besetting sin of the whole three
centuries with which this volume deals—the Obsession of the Kind.
Instead of being satisfied with the demonstration (which he and Cinthio
had reached) that Romance is not Epic, and is not bound by Epic laws,
Pigna torments himself to show that Romance _is_ Epic in this
particular, not-Epic in that, and is alternately subject to and free
from bondage: while some of his detailed investigations may raise smile,
or sigh, or shrug, according to mood or temperament. Thus for instance
he inquires (after a fashion which we shall find echoed in Ronsard) into
the character of the objects—Lance, Horn, Ring—with which _fatura_
(fairy agency) is usually associated, till we feel inclined to say, “O
learned and excellent signor, the poet may put _fatura_ in a
warming-pan—if he pleases, and can do it _poeticamente_!” But the book
is, on the whole, a good book: and Pigna deserves to rank with Cinthio
and Patrizzi as one of the Three who, alone in this first modern stage,
saw, if but afar-off and by glimpses, the Promised Land from which the
ship of criticism was to be once more driven by adverse winds for
centuries to come.
-----
Footnote 88:
Venice, 1554, 4to.
-----
A document of exceptional importance for us is provided by the two
curious dialogues _De Poetis Nostrorum Temporum_[89] of Lilius Gregorius
Giraldus, written about 1548-50, and dedicated partly to Renée of
Ferrara, the French Princess who for a time protected Marot and others,
partly to Cardinal Rangoni. [Sidenote: _Lilius Giraldus: his_ De Poetis
Nostrorum Temporum.] Lilius, who was now in a good old age (he had been
born in 1478), a Humanist of the better class, and a sincere Catholic
possessed of sufficient independence of current ill-fashions to speak
with severity of the verses of Beccadelli, would seem also to have been,
at first- or second-hand, a man of very wide literary knowledge. His
acquaintance with More[90] might be partly (as his very high estimate is
certainly) conditioned by ecclesiastical partisanship; but he speaks of
Wyatt long before _Tottel’s Miscellany_ made that poet’s works publicly
known, even in his own country, and, what is still more remarkable, of
Chaucer.[91] [Sidenote: _Its width of range._] Neither France nor
Germany is excluded with the usual Italian uppishness,[92] though
Giraldus cannot help slipping the word _barbarus_ more than once off his
tongue. And though Italy herself has, as we should expect, the lion’s
share, yet the process of sharing is not pursued to that extreme of
ridiculous arrogance which has been shown by the Greeks in their
decadence, by the French in their Augustanism, and by the Italians
themselves more than once.
-----
Footnote 89:
For the neat little edition of this by Karl Wotke (Berlin, 1894) one
must be thankful, and also for the careful bibliographical
introduction on recent work concerning Renaissance Literature.
Footnote 90:
_Op. cit._, pp. 62, 63, 70. Giraldus also knows Colet, Grocyn, and
others of the set.
Footnote 91:
“Fuere et in Britannorum idiomate et eorum vernaculo sermone aliqui
poetæ ab iis summo in pretio habiti, inter quos Galfridus Chaucerus
qui multa scripsit, et Thomas Viatus.” That he adds “_ambo_ insignes
equites” is very pardonable.
Footnote 92:
Not merely northern Humanists like Reuchlin, Erasmus, Eobanus Hessus,
and Hutten, not merely Greeks from Gemistus Pletho to Musurus and
Lascaris, but foreign vernacular writers like Ressendi, Juan de la
Mena, Marot, Martial d’Auvergne receive notice.
-----
But this real knowledge on Giraldus’ part, and the fairness of his
spirit, only serve to accentuate the drift in the course and direction
of this, the most important general summary of its kind that we meet
between the _Labyrinthus_ and the seventeenth century. [Sidenote: _But
narrowness of view._] Giraldus, though he does not absolutely exclude
the vernaculars, is perfectly convinced that poetry, and indeed
literature generally, means—first of all, and as far as its aristocracy
goes exclusively—writing in Latin; nay, with him even translation from
the classical languages is a more important thing than original
composition in the vulgar tongue. [Sidenote: _Horror at preference of
vernacular to Latin._] His contempt of this latter is thinly though
decently veiled in the passage on drama (_ed. cit._, p. 40), where,
speaking of the writers of comedy, and rightly preferring Ariosto to
Bibbiena, he says, “sed enim vernaculo sermone id plerique opus aggressi
pauci mea sententia assecuti sunt;” speaks (with a sort of visible shake
of the head, as over a good man lost) of Ariosto himself as one who
“Latino carmine aliquando ludit, sed nunc totum se vernaculis tradidit,
atque inter cetera furentem Orlandum dare curat in publicum;”[93]
patronisingly remarks of Trissino’s projected _Sophonisba_, that if the
whole of it is as good as the acts that the author recites, “erit,
_licet vernacula ipsa_, Latinorum tamen non indigna lectione,” wonders
at this George who “est ipse et Græce et Latine bene doctus, at nunc
fere in vernaculis conquiescit,” and ends with an impatient “Verum de
vernaculis jam satis,” and a mutter about _tonsores sellulariique_. He
speaks still less ambiguously later (ibid., p. 85), where cobblers and
other dregs of the people are added to barbers and mechanics in general
(as a tail to a list headed by Boiardo, Pulci, Politian, and Lorenzo de'
Medici!), and at last liberates his real feeling in a sentence, which
many very excellent men in all European countries would have indorsed
till nearly the end of the eighteenth century, “Ex quo nescioqui viri
alioqui docti _in eam hæresim_ incidere ut non modo vernaculas velint
Latinis litteris æquare verum etiam anteponere, quin et id etiam
litteris prodidere.” “Whence some persons, in other respects learned,
have fallen into such a heresy that they not only choose to make the
vernaculars equal with Latin, but even to set them above it—nay, they
have actually given literary expression to the doctrine.” A terrible
thing to Humanists, and, alas! one to which they have since had to make
up their minds! Unfortunately, the two great classical languages now
pay, and for some time to come are likely to continue paying, the
penalty of this idle miscalculation and _outrecuidance_ on the part of
their mistaken partisans; and it is the first duty of all lovers of
letters _now_ to fight for their maintenance in due place.
-----
Footnote 93:
The supposed _date_ of the conversation is, as usual in such case,
thrown a good deal back.
-----
But still the almost invincible equity of the man displays itself even
in his judgment of these unhappy schismatics; and he seems to make some
difference between the vernacular dialects and the _Sermo Etruscus_. On
Berni, Alamanni, the two “gentlewomen-poetesses,” as the Italians call
them, Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara, Speroni, La Casa, Aonio
Paleario, Molza, he has things amiable and acute at once to say.
But his heart is not here, nor in the mention of the poor barbarous
foreigners who may perhaps have some better excuse than “Latins” for not
writing in the Latin tongue. [Sidenote: _Yet a real critic in both
kinds._] It is of those who do so write—Italians first of all but also
others—that he really thinks as “the poets of his time.” He can find
room for a mere grammarian (though a very excellent grammarian) like
William Lilly: he speaks of him _magnificentissime_, and if this notice
contrasts rather comically with the brief and cold reference to Erasmus,
it is fair to remember not merely that Erasmus was by no means _persona
grata_ to the Roman orthodox, but that his poetical work is really
nothing as compared with his exquisite prose.
He begins with the two Mirandolas, Pontanus, Marullus, and Sannazar, and
is copious though not uncritical on them all: _non numquam nimis
lascivire et vagari videtur_, he says of Pontanus. [Sidenote: _Short_
précis _of the dialogues_.] Recalled by his interlocutor to still
earlier writers, he has the judgment of “the Panormitan”[94]
(Beccadelli), which has been noticed, and a by no means unremarkable
one, dwelling ominously on the “facility” of Mapheus Vegius, the
egregious person who took upon himself to write a thirteenth _Æneid_.
Many forgotten worthies (among whom Filelfo and the better Aretines,
Charles and Leonard, are the least forgotten) lead us (for Bembo and
Sadolet have had their position earlier, and will have it again) to a
famous pair, Mantuan and Politian. Giraldus is decisive and refreshing
on Mantuan. This loudly over-praised poet is _extemporalis magis quam
poeta maturus_, and as to his being _alter Maro_, why “Bone Deus! quam
dispar ingenium!”[95] He is much more favourable to the author of the
_Nutricia_ and the _Manto_, but does not forget his swashing blow even
here. Politian seems to him to have written _calore potius quam arte_,
and to have used little diligence either in choosing his subjects or
correcting his work. The Strozzi and Urceus Codrus follow, with many
minor lights, from the notices of whom the judgment on Ludovicus Bigus
Pictorius of Ferrara stands out as applicable, unfortunately, to some
greater men and many as small or smaller. “Cum pius deflexit ad
religionem, ut vita melior ita carmine deterior visus est.” Then one of
the regulation pieces of flattery as to the Augustan character of the
rule of _Leo Maximus_ conducts us to notices of Naugerius and Vida,
where the moderate and deserved praise of the first would contrast oddly
(if we did not know how the pseudo-classical tradition for two hundred
years and more said vehement “ditto” to Giraldus) with the extravagant
eulogies on the polished emptiness of the latter. And then a great
_turba_ comes, among which the two Beroalds, Acciauoli and, among blind
poets, Bello, the author of the _Mambriano_, chiefly take the eye.
-----
Footnote 94:
He allows him (p. 18, ed. cit.) “sweetness and wit,” but says _nescio
quare_ as to the contemporary praise of the _Hermaphroditus_, and adds
plumply, _nec poeta bonus nec bonus orator_. The simple fact is that,
if the subjects of this notorious book were decent, nobody would see
anything but quite ordinary merit in their treatment.
Footnote 95:
Ed. cit., p. 25.
-----
We have noted the condescension to such poor vernacular creatures as
Ariosto, Bibbiena, and (with a long interval certainly) Trissino and the
author of the first _Rosmunda_. It is succeeded by another review of
persons long relinquished to dusty shelves and memories, with a few
better known names like Molza and Longolius. The praise of the great
Fracastorius is much more moderate than we might have expected—probably
Giraldus did not like his subject—and then there is a curious passage on
“fancy” verses, leonine, serpentine, and others, leading to yet another,
in which the worse side of the Renaissance—its contempt for the Middle
Ages—is shown by a scornful reference to _Architrenios et
Anti-claudianos_, which finishes the first dialogue. The second is of a
wider cast, but needs less minute account here, though it is at least as
well worth reading. It begins with the Greeks, who did so much for
Italy, from Gemistus Pletho and Chrysoloras downwards, then takes the
Spaniards and Portuguese, then our own countrymen, then the Germans and
French. Here comes the description of Erasmus as _inter Germanos Latinus
inter Latinos aliquando Germanus_; and here Giraldus frankly confesses
that he is not going to say anything about persons like Œcolampadius,
Bucer, Sturm, and Melanchthon, since they were not contented to confine
themselves to good literature, and would know too much, and trouble
Israel with Luther. But a good word is spared, justly, for the author of
the _Basia_, with a reversion to still younger men, among whom
Palingenius, Julius Cæsar Scaliger, and Castelvetro are the best known,
and with the final fling at the vernaculars above given.
Such a book, with its wonderful width of range[96] and its sometimes
equally wonderful contraction of view, is worth, to the historian of
real criticism, a dozen long-winded tractates hunting the old
red-herrings of critical theory. [Sidenote: _Their great historic
value._] The _De Poetis Nostrorum Temporum_ gives us one of those
veritable and inestimable rallying-points of which our History should be
little more than a reasoned catalogue, connected by summary of less
important phenomena. Referring duly to it, we find ourselves at the
standpoint of a man who has really wide knowledge, and who, when his
general assumptions do not interfere, has a real critical grasp. But the
chief of these assumptions is not merely that the vernaculars have not
attained equality with the classics—this, allowing for inevitable
defects of perspective and other things, would not be fatal—but that
they cannot attain such equality, much less any superiority. The point
of view—to us plain common-sense—that if Sannazar and others wrote in
Latin about Christian subjects, they should use Christian Latin, seems
to Giraldus the point of view of a kind of maniac. Without the details
and developments of Vida, he is apparently in exact accordance with that
excellent Bishop. Cicero and Virgil, not to mention others, have
achieved for literature a medium which cannot be improved upon, and all
those who adopt any other are, if not exactly wicked, hopelessly
deceived and deluded. This is the major premiss for practically every
syllogism of our critic. Where it does not come in—between vernacular
and vernacular, between Latin and Latin of the classical type—he can
judge just judgment. Where it comes in, the more perfect his logic, the
more inevitably vitiated is his conclusion.
-----
Footnote 96:
As a rough but not misleading gauge of this it may be mentioned that
Herr Wotke’s _Namenregister_ contains for less than 100 printed pages,
between four and five hundred entries, including, besides those
noticed in the text, names like those of Olympia Morata and Bilibald
Pirkheimer, Castiglione and Alciati, Conrad Celtes and Paulus Jovius,
Cardinal Perotti and Jacob Wimpheling. In fact, hardly any one in
Europe who had to do with _belles lettres_ seems to have been outside
the cognisance, in closer or vaguer kind, of Giraldus.
-----